gh-update

A Python script to automatically update a portable program from a GitHub release. Automatically finds and downloads a GitHub release asset, then unpacks it into a folder. Supports unpacking zip or tar.* archives. Optionally backs up the existing folder first.

Writing config files

Before you can start using gh-update, you'll need to create a config file either manually or programmatically. I've included a sample script called write_ruffle_config that creates a gh-update config file for the Ruffle Flash emulator.

A gh-update config file consists of a general section and one or more asset config sections. The general section contains two items:

• repo: Specifies the GitHub repository to download releases from.
• download_prerelease: Determines whether prerelease assets such as nightly builds are downloaded.

An asset config section should have a memorable name based on the name of the release asset that it downloads. The section contains two required items:

• regex: Specifies a regular expression to match the release asset names against. This determines what release asset file is downloaded.
• extract_path: Specifies the folder path that the downloaded release asset will be unpacked into.

This section may also contain 4 optional items:

• backup_path: Specifies the folder path that previous program versions will be copied into. If none is specified, no backups will be performed.
• delete_files: Determines whether to delete files from previous program versions. The default is False, meaning files are not deleted.
• installed_name: Specifies the name of the currently installed release. This is managed by gh-update and normally does not need to be edited.
• installed_date: Specifies the date that the currently installed release was published. This is managed by gh-update and normally does not need to be edited.

Running gh-update

Before running gh-update, you will need to install the Requests library by running pip install requests.

Once you have created a suitable config file, simply run python gh_update.py config.ini asset_name to update your portable program!

For example, to update the Ruffle desktop app on a 64-bit Windows machine, you would run python gh_update.py ruffle.ini win64.